This week I’m kicking off a project I’m calling “Roots” – a collection of audio interviews with resort marketers about who they are and how they got to where they are today. If you know someone you’d like to see interview in a future round, give me a shout. I’d love any suggestions you have.

Jared Winkler is the man running the marketing machine at Brighton Resort, Utah. I’ve always loved Brighton since I spent my second day on snow there in 1995. Throughout the years, I had seen Jared’s name pop up on KSL TV’s old Ski Utah show and Board the World. With just a few pieces of an intriguing story, I reached out and Jared was kind enough to share a busy morning with me last week. Here’s what he had to say.

On a side note, my desire to do this series was greater than my lack of interviewing skills. Please be patient as I (re)learn this skill :)

I haven’t written transcripts for these yet. If that’s something you’d prefer over the audio version, let me know in the comments section below.

jj

Good job. I’ve met Jared if only for a few minutes and a number of his counterparts at other resorts. Neat to hear his personal story and accomplishments. Value, snow and terrain is a good sum of Brighton, crowds not bad either. I listened to the whole 24 minutes, although that was a commitment :-) Maybe 15 mins max would be good? One of the most enthusiastic resort marketing guys I’ve ever met was Eric Friedman at Mad River Glen. He’d be a good interview and his mountain is pretty unique.

Thanks, JJ, I’m definitely learning that times have changed. I used to run a podcast with 45+ minute episodes 6-ish years ago and never heard a peep about length for all the years I published. Now, 25 minutes appears to be an eternity.

With audio, I’m hoping people realize they can just listen in the background as most people do with music already. So, for the time being, I think I’m going to stick with the length as is. I may try some variations, but in terms of stories, 20-25 minutes is actually fairly short and we’re already missing details that would make their stories more interesting.

The one thing I am recognizing is that is doesn’t fit the usual SlopeFillers MO of 3-5 minute read times, but I’ve had some ideas to address that without getting in the way of the audio and story. Stay tuned.